Chapter 2 - The Initials on the Paper
For three seconds, nobody moved.
Vincent stood near the office door.
I held the paper.
Arthur waited.
“Norah.”
His voice was softer now.
Which somehow made it worse.
“What is written on the back?”
I looked at Vincent.
He didn’t run.
He didn’t argue.
He simply said, “Tell him.”
So I did.
“V.B.”
Arthur’s fingers stopped moving.
“Vincent Bell?”
“Those are the initials.”
Arthur turned toward Vincent’s position.
Vincent stepped forward.
“That paper isn’t mine.”
“How comforting,” I said.
Arthur raised a hand.
I stopped.
“Vincent. When did you last enter the accounting archive?”
“Yesterday.”
“Why?”
“Security review.”
“Who knew?”
“You.”
Arthur considered that.
Then something unexpected happened.
He reached into a drawer and removed his phone.
“Norah.”
“Yes?”
“Call accounting.”
“Who?”
“All of them.”
Twenty minutes later, six department heads stood around Arthur’s conference table.
Nobody knew why.
Arthur did not mention the note.
Instead, he asked questions.
Small questions.
Dates.
Payments.
Vendor names.
Ordinary details.
One by one, people answered.
And Arthur listened.
I slowly realized he wasn’t testing their numbers.
He was testing their voices.
The director of procurement answered confidently.
The controller sounded irritated.
The logistics manager sounded confused.
Then Arthur asked CFO Malcolm Reed about the March seventeenth transfer.
A pause.
Tiny.
Perhaps half a second.
But Arthur heard it.
“So?” Arthur asked.
Malcolm cleared his throat.
“Four hundred eighty thousand.”
“Certain?”
“Yes.”
Arthur leaned back.
“Meeting finished.”
Everyone left.
Everyone except Malcolm.
Arthur said, “You may go too.”
Malcolm hesitated.
Then left.
When the door closed, Arthur turned toward me.
“He lied.”
“You can tell?”
“I can tell he was afraid of the question.”
Vincent spoke.
“That doesn’t prove theft.”
“No,” Arthur replied. “But somebody wants us to believe you’re responsible.”
Vincent exhaled.
I looked at the note.
“So the initials were planted.”
“Probably.”
“Why?”
Arthur turned toward my voice.
“To make me remove the one person who controls access to every security log in this building.”
That was when the mystery stopped feeling like a bookkeeping error.
Someone wasn’t merely stealing.
Someone was preparing the building.
Over the next two days, Arthur told nobody what we had found.
I became his unofficial second set of eyes.
He became mine for everything I overlooked.
We spent hours comparing reports.
I read.
He remembered.
It was astonishing.
A transaction I mentioned once on Monday returned from his memory Thursday with the exact date and amount.
Eventually, we found the pattern.
Every false transfer occurred within forty-eight hours of a board meeting.
Every transfer went through legitimate subsidiaries.
Every discrepancy was small enough to disappear inside legitimate expenses.
But added together over eighteen months?
Nearly eight million dollars.
I stared at the calculator.
“Someone stole eight million dollars?”
Arthur shook his head.
“No.”
I looked up.
“What?”
“They moved eight million.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A thief takes money to spend.”
He touched the paper.
“This was transferred deliberately.”
“Where?”
“That is what we find next.”
Friday night, Vincent brought food upstairs.
Arthur worked while I ate noodles directly from the carton.
At midnight, Vincent left.
At twelve fifteen, the office was quiet.
“You should go home,” Arthur said.
“So should you.”
“I am home.”
I stopped.
“This office?”
“The apartment upstairs.”
“That’s depressing.”
“So are my curtains, apparently.”
I smiled.
“You remembered.”
“I remember everything you say.”
Something in his tone made me stop smiling.
The silence changed.
Not dangerous.
Not uncomfortable.
Just strangely personal.
I looked at him.
Without his employees around, Arthur appeared less like the man Chicago whispered about.
More like someone who had spent years building walls because everyone treated blindness as weakness.
I asked, “How long?”
He knew what I meant.
“Five years.”
“What happened?”
His expression closed instantly.
“You ask too many questions.”
“You answer too few.”
A pause.
Then:
“An accident.”
I waited.
Nothing more.
“Okay.”
That seemed to surprise him.
“You’re not going to ask?”
“You’ll tell me if you want to.”
His head turned slightly toward me.
People probably pushed him constantly.
Doctors.
Employees.
Friends.
Enemies.
Everyone wanting explanations.
I decided he could keep one.
At twelve thirty-seven, my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I opened the message.
A photograph appeared.
Me.
Walking into Arthur’s building that morning.
Below it were eight words.
STOP READING HIS ACCOUNTS AND YOU KEEP YOUR JOB.
I froze.
Arthur immediately noticed.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
He turned toward me.
“Norah.”
“Spam.”
“You stopped chewing.”
Damn him.
I placed the phone on the desk.
Arthur held out his hand.
I hesitated, then put the phone into it before remembering.
He couldn’t see the message.
My chest tightened.
“Read it.”
So I did.
Slowly.
When I finished, Arthur’s expression became colder than I had ever seen it.
“They photographed you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
He picked up his office phone.
I grabbed his wrist.
“Wait.”
He went completely still.
Vincent had warned me never to touch him without warning.
I released him immediately.
“Sorry.”
Arthur said nothing for a moment.
Then quietly:
“You can touch me, Norah.”
That sentence did something strange to my heartbeat.
I ignored it.
“We can’t react.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever sent this thinks I’ll panic.”
“You should be concerned.”
“I am.”
“Then go home.”
“That’s exactly what they want.”
Arthur’s jaw tightened.
I leaned closer.
“They know I’m reading your records.”
“Yes.”
“They know we found something.”
“Yes.”
“So let them think the message worked.”
His brow furrowed.
“What are you suggesting?”
“Tomorrow morning, fire me.”
Arthur’s expression changed instantly.
“No.”
“They need to believe I’m gone.”
“No.”
“Arthur—”
“No.”
I stared at him.
“That’s not strategy.”
“What is it?”
“You being stubborn.”
His voice lowered.
“They involved you because of me.”
“No. They involved me because I found them.”
Silence.
Then Arthur said something I didn’t expect.
“I won’t use you as bait.”
I looked at the man everyone feared.
And suddenly understood why.
Arthur Cornero wasn’t afraid of losing eight million dollars.
He was afraid of losing people.
Before I could answer, the office phone rang.
12:43 a.m.
Arthur reached for it.
Nobody should have been calling that line.
He answered.
“Cornero.”
Silence.
His expression changed.
“Who is this?”
Then a distorted voice came through loudly enough that I heard it from several feet away.
“You remember everything, Arthur.”
A pause.
“But do you remember who was in the car the night you lost your sight?”
The line disconnected.
May you like
Arthur went white.
And for the first time since I met him, Arthur Cornero looked afraid.
